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AlienGUIse™ Theme Manager is powered by MyColors™ technology from Stardock® and dramatically transforms the appearance of your Microsoft® Windows® operating system into a truly unique display, and features exclusive Alienware-centered skins like, Invader, Darkstar™, ALXMorph™, and the new Xenomorph™.
These sleek and stylish Alienware skins vividly alter the appearance of
desktop features such as your icons, wallpaper, and Windows Media
Player.
Some of you with a sharp eye might have noticed something very interesting on-screen during the Windows 7 multi-touch demonstration at the D6 conference yesterday. If you did, you might be curious to understand what you saw. If you didn’t, read on anyway. Update: The new taskbar is superficially called the “Superbar”.
The picture above comes from the video feed of Julie Larson Green’s
(Vice President of Windows Experience Program Management) demo of the
multi-touch picture browser demo app. The quality is a little rough,
but you can easily notice a few things that are different.
The first being the taskbar is higher than usual, but not as big as
double-height. If I were to guess, I’d say its somewhere around
1.75x-high. In the left corner, the Windows orb remains wedged
“on top” of the taskbar – sticking its head out a little -
instead of in the center like it is today in Vista.
The taskbar also appears ‘divided’ into sections by
variations in the color (dark, gray, lighter) to indicate the different
areas. Speaking of which, if you look at the far right corner,
you’d notice that the tray (icons & clock) is not
touching the edge of the screen, and there’s a small lighter gap.
I have no explanation for this, but is well worth keeping an eye on.
Keeping the focus on the right, the tray is also different. The icons
sit in the middle of the taskbar, instead of wrapping in two-lines like
it does today, whilst the date now wraps on two lines instead of three.
This clearly indicates this taskbar cannot accommodate three lines of
text.
Most obviously the quick launch icons are now larger in size, but the icon besides it is not a quick launch icon instead an application.
I’ve been told this particular Windows 7 build has rendering
issues which is why there’s no label or text next to the icon,
but there should have been. At the same time, the icon also should have been a smaller version of the “Live Preview” thumbnails you see when you hover over applications in the taskbar today. That would have been pretty sweet. Apparently that feature has been canned .
Now you would probably be wondering why I just spent so much effort writing about a taskbar, and the answer is because this is what Windows 7 is about.
They’re going to take existing interface elements like the
taskbar and give them a new coat of paint with some sparkles. Different
enough so you notice them, like Walt Mossberg did.
During the demonstration (5:25) Walt asks “I can’t help
noticing that the taskbar doesn’t look like the taskbar?”
Julie responds with, “It’s something we’re working on
Windows 7 and I’m not suppose to talk about it now today.”
Shutdown.
Update: Guess those Windows “Start Menu” surveys weren’t all flash and no substance.
Microsoft has officially opened its service SkyDrive
in 36 countries. What is SkyDrive? It’s a service accommodation and
storage online. Offering 5 gigabytes of space, it can store a large
number of documents, with a selection of directories to sort, and a
Public folder for the content you want to share without restriction;
something similar to Google Apps.
Currently, SkyDrive is compatible with the following browsers:
The service continues to be updated regularly, even if Microsoft
prepares in its laboratories Live Mesh, which will be the start of the
unification of a number of Live services. The publisher has added
support for SkyDrive in 24 new countries including Germany, Greece, Poland, Romania, Singapore or Thailand.
Users can now post comments on all the files that are hosted by the
service. Concerning images, it is also possible to leave a caption on
each. It also noted the emergence of a new mode of view “Miniatures”,
like Windows, offering a preview faster. Moreover, the link “Details”
was also added.
Microsoft is getting ready for a 3rd quarter launch for IE8 beta 2
and this time its being aimed at the general consumers. Microsoft wants
web developers to prepare their sites for the broad adoption of IE8 and
its new standards mode.
Consistent with our efforts to
promote further interoperability across the Web, Microsoft will be
releasing Internet Explorer 8 to render content in its most
standards-compliant way by default. Giving top priority to Web
standards interoperability allows us to help web developers and
designers drive toward the ideal of “write once, run anywhere”, freeing
up more time to innovate rather than modify content for different
browsers. This commitment also addresses several development and design
pain points from previous Internet Explorer releases.
However, browsing with this default setting may cause content
written for previous versions of Internet Explorer to display
differently than intended. This creates a call to action for site
owners to ensure their content will continue to display seamlessly in
Internet Explorer 8. As such, we have provided a meta-tag usable on a
per-page or per-site level to maintain backwards compatibility with
Internet Explorer 7.
